This makes it easy for researchers in the law of one jurisdiction to see how courts in other jurisdictions have addressed the same issues.

We consider this one step in building out a contributor’s reputation on the site.   You can use this to keep track of your own contributions, as well as  look up someone else’s.

Lawyers have a long and varied tradition of sharing analysis of the law in public ways for reasons other than a paycheck. A fairly new instance is the proliferation of law blogs we write for—our own blogs, other people’s blogs, blogs run by law firms, by private companies, by non-profits, you name it. Older examples include writing for print bar publications, teaching and making presentations for legal associations, and many others.

Why do lawyers give away their expert knowledge? Because they get more out of it that way, professionally and personally, than they would by reserving every insight for paying customers. Demonstrating expertise helps lawyers generate business through referrals and makes them more attractive to potential employers, for example. Many also find it intellectually satisfying or enjoy the interaction with those learning from them.

At Spindle Law we’re hard at work to create an environment that rewards contributors richly in many ways. It’s a brand new kind of environment, but if we get it right, lawyers will contribute for all the same old reasons they always have.

Please go read the whole of Laura Bergus’s wonderful review on Lawyerist this morning. Then, please return to Spindle Law, sign in, and share a bit of what you know about the law. As the review says, you “can use Spindle Law as an outlining tool for any legal topic, as well as a way to track and store research for memo- and brief-writing projects. All while contributing to the site to make it more useful for others.”

If you think you might like to contribute to the site but aren’t sure how to get started, please email us.  As I mentioned in my podcast conversation with Laura on Legal Geekery, we’re excited to be just getting started on a section on civil procedure.  If that’s something you know something about, whether you’re an experienced litigator or a thoughtful law student, please mention that specifically.  If you have another area in mind, please mention that.  If you don’t have a specific area in mind, that’s great, too.

Robert Ambrogi has an excellent post about the site on his LawSites blog.  He does a great job describing Spindle Law, and explaining why lawyers should find it an intuitive way to find answers to legal questions.  In fact, if you haven’t figured out what in the world it is we’re doing over here, and you’re curious, I refer you to the LawSites piece.  For those of you who don’t follow this sort of thing, Ambrogi is one of the leading commentators on legal technology in the country, so we’re really pleased about his post.

Also today, Legal Geekery’s newest podcast (Episode 15) includes a 15-minute-or-so conversation that Laura Bergus recorded with me a couple of weeks ago about Spindle Law.  (Listen to the whole thing, but if you want to start with the Spindle Law segment, it begins at 37:25.)  Laura, as you may know, is both a law student and a professional social media expert, and, as she related on her own blog on the 30th, we ended up speaking after she tweeted her desire for a site that crowd-sourced propositions of law and supporting authorities.  So it almost goes without saying that our project makes sense to her.  It was a real pleasure speaking with her both during the interview and beforehand, when she let me pick her brain about the best ways to get law students involved in what we’re making.  I hope you’ll find it interesting, and if you’re one of her law student listeners—or a lawyer or law professor or other law type—please join us!

For the record, the cars impaled on the Spindle, from top to bottom, were:

1. A red Volkswagen Beetle,
2. A silver BMW,
3. A blue Ford Escort,
4. A green Mercury Capri,
5. A white Ford Mustang,
6. A maroon Pontiac Grand Prix,
7. A yellow Ford LTD, and
8. A black Mercury Grand Marquis.

We recently released a new feature on Spindle Law that we call “contribution suggestions” that will help you find these authorities.    As you browse  topics and rules, you’ll see a box with a random selection of rules from within the area of law you are are browsing.  Clicking on one of those rules will bring you to an authority for that rule that either is missing some information or hasn’t been vouched for at least twice.   You’ll see question marks where an authority needs information which you can then fill in by hovering over the authority and clicking the “edit” link.   If the authority is complete and you’ve read the source and can vouch that it stands for the rule, you again hover over the authority and click the “vouch” link.

To see a full list of rules with authorities that need your input, click on the the “view more suggestions” link.   From there, you can also switch to another area of law for finding contribution suggestions.

FNC is an area of civil procedure that often is an early flash point in litigation, generally involving foreign parties litigating in U.S. courts.  As a foreign party myself, at least relatively speaking (I was born in England), I have become increasingly interested in FNC.  I try to follow the case law and read the secondary source materials when I can.  In addition, I have had the great opportunity to work on FNC in practice (though the views expressed about it here and on the site are mine alone not those of the law firm where I am of counsel), including spirited debates with colleagues, opposing counsel and before the court.

I built the section largely by reviewing relevant opinions — some that are known to have defined aspects of the law, others that were recently issued — and by extracting and layering the rules and topics (collectively, the branches) together into the Spindle Law tree.   I have tried to organize the section according to the logic of the law and generally the way it appeared in the opinions, but, as our Extended Contributor Guide notes, “[c]reating the organization of any legal issue is more art than science, and if given the same legal issue to organize, Spindle Law contributors might organize it somewhat differently.”

One of the most satisfying aspects of developing the section was ensuring that no topic or rule had more than seven descendant branches.  This principle, (the “Rule of Seven”) is based on the theory that seven is about the maximum number of items a person can hold in her mind at once.  (For some of us, even seven is a stretch!).  This structural requirement translates into substantive analysis.  In other words, it means thinking both broadly and narrowly about the particular issue in order to divide and sub-divide it into additional topics and rules.  The goal is to set out the law in a way that flows naturally.  To anyone who will listen, I have compared the experience of organizing the law in this way to aligning one’s chakras.  I urge you to try it.

Although I think the section answers a lot of the important questions about FNC, it undoubtedly has a long way to go:  more branches, authorities, comments.  I hope to dedicate time regularly to digesting new authorities and contributing their rules and the authorities they cite.  As important, if not more so, my goal is to involve others in this endeavor and in the project of building other areas of the law – even micro-topics — on the site.  Doing so allows you to think more expansively about an area of the law and help others understand it too, while demonstrating your expertise and connecting you to a community of lawyers thinking about the law in a new way.

If there’s an area of law that you’re jazzed about (your own FNC), whatever it is, find the best place on the Spindle Tree, and dive right in:  add some topics and rules, contribute some authorities.  Got a favorite, beloved case?  Be the first to add the propositions that it stands for.  Or comment on the authorities and branches in the areas of law already covered on the site.  If we can help, let us know.